The fish Amok! – Traditional Khmer food

The Amok is a traditional dish from Cambodia. It can be made with fish, pork, tofu, or chicken. Very tasty and a little bit spicy (depending on each recipe) this is always coming with steamed rice, as rice is the basis of all our meals, even breakfast! By the way, to eat in Khmer is “nyam bai” which literally means “to eat rice”!

We went to Haven restaurant to discover the recipe with a real Chef, it was very interesting to see this big kitchen! Haven is a restaurant, but also a social enterprise that is training vulnerable young adults from orphanages and safe shelters, as well as underprivileged young adults from very rural poor areas to be future restaurant workers and owners.

The Chef even took us to the market to choose the good ingredients! Then we all ate our Amok. It was delicious, especially because we made it!

To do a fish Amok you need:

• 4 Amok leaves
• ½ white onion
• ½ red onion
• 3 gloves of garlic
• 100 grams of river fish
• 3 spoons of curry paste
• 1 Stock chicken
• 1 spoon of sugar
• 1 spoon of Tamarin Sauce
• Coconut milk
• Fish Sauce
• White mushrooms
• Chili Sauce
• Cooking oil

 

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Cultivation of the late millet

Two  teachers and ten students from Presentation Junior High School have done a great and useful work: cultivation of the late millet, the whole process from the beginning to the end, from preparing the land for sowing to eating TZ made from millet flour.

Some facts about millet:

• Millet provides a host of nutrients, has a sweet nutty flavor, and is considered to be one of the most digestible and non-allergenic grains available;
• It is one of the few grains that  is alkalizing the body;
• Millet acts as a prebiotic feeding micro-flora in your inner ecosystem;
• Millet’s high protein content (15 percent) makes it a substantial addition to a vegetarian diet.
• Millet is an important food  crop in Northern part of Ghana and Northern, Upper West and Upper East (where  Logre village belongs) Regions produce 90 per cent Ghana’s millet.
• The typical Ghanaian staple foods in the northern part  include millet.

Watch useful and educative 3-minute overview with photos and explanations about the cultivation of late millet at Logre stages.

 

And also longer video about the process.

Special thanks to Presentation Junior High School students, teacher Derrick Adongo who instructed the students and was a patron of this food project, and camera-man, ICT-teacher Justice Pelig-bagre for the wonderful work! Hope the readers will appreciate it too!

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TZ for dinner every day!

Tuo Zaafi (TZ) with okrosoup by Dagliga PS
Tuo Zaafi, also known as TZ is a very popular dish in northern Ghana. They eat it almost every day here. Many people are not used to eat anything else at all for dinner. TZ is also common in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger.

“Tuo” means stirring and “zaafi” means hot.  Tuo Zaafi is commonly made with maize flour or millet flour and it is soft in nature and a little sticky when felt between the hands.  It is normally eaten with any soup but most commonly with okrosoup. It has to be mentioned, that Ghanaians eat mostly with their hands, without using fork or knife.

Dagliga Primary School prepared TZ with okrosoup. It is now a harvest time, so they used fresh okro.

As all the food projects in Ghana (guided by Mondo’s volunteer Liina), Dagliga’s food project was filmed by a student. So he had a cooking lesson and a ICT lesson at the same time!

2 in 1: cooking and ICT lessons together.

TZ with okrosoup were prepared by professional cooking teacher and assisted by her students.

Professional cooking teacher and her students

Okrosoup

TZ with okrosoup

 Watch our educative film and find out how one of the most popular northern Ghana national dishes is made. Actually the whole process lasted for 3 hours, but the film is only 20 minute long!

 

After eating the staple food, TZ with okrosoup, we had Estonian sweet called halva (made from peanuts) for dessert. Ghanaians thought it was delicious but too sweet!

Estonian sweet called halva.

So, what do you have every day for dinner? Is it the same food every day or different ones?

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Common Ghanaian food for lunch – “kanzagma”

Gorug Primary School prepared national Ghanaian dish “kanzagma”. It is made from millet flour and beans leaves and steamed. “Kanzagma” is a light meal and commonly eaten for lunch.

We are ready for cooking!

For preparing “kanzagma” you need:

– millet flour;
– beans leaves;
– salt bitter
– sheaoil and pepper for taste;
– pot (and grass and net) for steaming;
– “blender” for smashing beans leaves;
– calabash for shaking.

All you need for preparing “kanzagma”

Ready “kanzagma” in calabash and one of the cooks.

Want to know how our national dish is prepared? Watch short video below and find out!

There was also a performance after cooking. Students and teachers clapped their hands, sang and danced three different dances wearing colourful costumes.

Teachers dancing Ghanaian national dance

After cooking and dancing – BON APPETIT!

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Handmade shea butter

Sekoti PS food project – SHEA BUTTER
Shea butter is a natural fat extracted from the African shea tree.  It is edbile and is used in food preparation.  Ghanaians use it very often in different meals. They usually don’t use it as a body lotion, only for babies.

Shea tree

Sheanuts

The students from Sekoti Primary School prepared handmade shea butter – from shea tree nuts to cooled shea oil. It is wonderful how the fat changes the colour from brown to yellow!

The most important part of making shea butter is kneading.

Finished product, cooled shea oil – shea butter

To see how the Sekoti students made the shea butter, watch the video below!

Occasionally the chocolate industry uses shea butter as a substitute for cocoa butter. And all over the world shea butter is used in natural cosmetics as a moisturizer or body lotion. Shea butter melts at body temperature and absorbs rapidly into the skin without leaving a greasy feeling.

It is also used in pure natural soaps.

NGO Mondo sells Ghanaian shea butter in Estonia

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World Food Day in Dasabligo PS

It was World Food Day last Thursday, so to celebrate that Dasabligo Primary School prepared different dishes from maize. Our first post here was about harvesting maize and now we continued our project and cooked some traditional maize meals.

Ghanaian national dishes we made on World Food Day

Uses of maize
Maize is sold in the fresh or dry shelled state in the local markets. The marketing of maize is done by many middlemen.

Maize is eaten by roasting and boiling at the fresh state.

Maize is locally used in making food such as “kenkey”, “waha”, “goya” (“tubani”), porridge, tuo zaafi (TZ), “mgmera”, rasta porridge, “banku” among others.

Both grain and leaves are used to feed farm animals. It is also used in making alcohol (“pito”), corn starch, corn oil, corn syrubs and sugars. The husks are used to wrap food (“kenkey”) and to wave doormats. The stalks are used as fuel (firewood) food cooking and mulching soils.

We prepared six different meals, as you can see from following photos:

“Banku”

Beans and maize

Okrosoup with beef

Pepper sauce

Tomato-onion-fish sauce

“Tubani”

How we prepared the dishes? Watch our video and find out!

http://youtu.be/9QWu4yyJQaU

Happy World Food Day!

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Ghanaian dish “nkanzagma” by Yakoti JHS

Yakoti Junior High School prepared Ghanaian national dish “nkanzagma”

Us!

Little helper from kindergarten!

“Nkanzagma” is a dish prepared mainly from millet flour and cooked by steaming. It is a delicious light meal for lunch.

Recipe

Ingredients

• ½ bowl of millet flour
• Pepper and salt to taste
• Cooking oil
• White beans leaves

Method

1. Wash and pound beans leaves
2. Add salt-bitter and water
3. Mix thoroughly and squeeze out beans leaves
4. Sprinkle the mixture on the flour and mix well
5. Put cooking pot on fire and spread with net or clean leaves/grasses
6. Put mixture in a calabash or shallow rubber and roll till smaller balls are formed
7. Spread them on the net or clean grasses and allow the steam to cook it
8. Serve with oil and pepper hot or cold.

Very important part of the procedure is shaking/rolling the mixture to form small balls.

Shaking the mixture in calabash

Here’s our video! Have a nice 7 minutes with us!

 

NAYEN SONG KA LA SIGI! (Nabt)

BON APPETIT! (English)

HEAD ISU! (Estonian)

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Happy World Food Day!

Today is World Food Day! Congratulations if you ate something today! 🙂

World Food Day 2014 is dedicated to family farms and to the food that comes from them. Family farms are important as they are great examples of sustainable farming and they play an important role in saving traditional crops and agrobiodiversity.

Below is an interesting infographic from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations that tells more about family farming and important facts on the topic.

Many of the foods in this blog come from family farms. You can see great examples of students getting to know local food crops on small land patches here and here.

Still often we forget about where our food comes from and who grew it. Today is a great day to say “Thank you!” to the farmer who gave us our food.

How much do you know about your local family farms?

The best “koosi” masters are in Sekoti JHS!

“Koosi” – fried beans cakes

How to you call a fried cake in your country? A pancake? A doughnut? Something else? We, in Ghana, Upper East region, call  fried beans-flour-cake as “koosi“. We don’t eat “koosi” every day, it is a dish for special occasions. Today was special occasion for us – we, the 3rd grade students from Sekoti Junior High School (in Estonia 9th grade) prepared our national dish in front of our school house, under the tree.

There were following people in our cooking team:

• two teachers who guided us (but we did all by ourselves)
• Video: Samuel
• Cooks: Alice, Martha, Jennifer, Grace and two Mary’s.

“Koosi” masters from Sekoti JHS

The process was fun and the result tasty. Actually, the volunteer from Estonia, Liina, said that “koosi” was the best national dish she has tasted in Africa so far!

Isn’t it delicious?

“Koosi”

 

Yes? Yes! Watch the video and find out how we prepared “koosi“!

 

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Traditional Estonian Foods

This video was made some years ago at our school – Rapla Vesiroosi Gymnasium. It is still valid, because people in Estonia still like kama powder as a source of our national cooking line as well as barley and buttermilk. You can see some of our students making karask, eggbutter, potato salad and other Estonian traditional foods in the cookery class.
The recipes are in the video.

 

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